{"id":86088,"date":"2015-05-09T09:47:54","date_gmt":"2015-05-09T08:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/?p=86088"},"modified":"2024-06-21T16:06:56","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T15:06:56","slug":"londons-storm-win-the-inaurgural-bt-wheelchair-rugby-national-championships-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/londons-storm-win-the-inaurgural-bt-wheelchair-rugby-national-championships-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"LONDON\u2019S STORM WIN THE INAURGURAL BT WHEELCHAIR RUGBY NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: times new roman,serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 22pt;\">LONDON\u2019S STORM WIN THE INAURGURAL BT<\/span><\/span><\/strong> <strong><span style=\"font-family: times new roman,serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 22pt;\">WHEELCHAIR RUGBY NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS 2015<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman,serif;\">London Wheelchair Rugby Club Storm has won the BT Wheelchair Rugby National Championships at the Copper Box Arena in London\u2019s Queen Elizabeth Park.\u00a0 The event was the first in a three year partnership between Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby (GBWR) and BT, a long-term supporter of disability sport in the UK, and saw over a thousand spectators turning up to watch the action.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Most Valued Player award went to Ayaz Bhuta from Southport\u2019s West Coast Crash, but it was Storm that grabbed the top spot ahead of the Kent Crusaders, with West Coast Crash in third place and new squad Canterbury winning the second division BT Challenge Shield.\u00a0 BT\u2019s Suzy Christopher presented the winners with their prizes, as well as awards to <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: times new roman,serif;\">Dave Goddard from Storm who won the award for best player in his class (0.5); whilst Ryan Cowling won 1.0; Coral Batey 1.5; former GB Captain, Steve Brown 2.0; Mandip Sehmi 2.5 and Jim Roberts the 3\/3.5 class.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">David Pond, chief executive of Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby (GBWR) said: \u201cThe fact that we had 16 teams playing in our national championships this year is testament to the success of the London 2012 legacy and the continuing investment by the Lottery and Sport England.\u00a0 \u201cThis was the first event of our new partnership with BT, and we are all very excited about working with them, over the next three years, to provide more opportunities for more people to experience the sport.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">The Championships also gave spectators the chance to try out the sport, with over 200 taking up the opportunity.\u00a0 Community Partners Harlequins were on hand to lead skills sessions and Motivate East introduced over 100 young people to other recreational sports.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Suzy Christopher, head of brand partnerships at BT, commented: \u201c<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: times new roman,serif;\">As a long-term supporter of disability sport and one of the driving forces behind the Paralympic movement in the UK, we\u2019re excited about our new partnership with GB Wheelchair Rugby. The BT Wheelchair Rugby National Championships was the first big domestic event being staged as part of this partnership, and it was fantastic to see the UK\u2019s best wheelchair rugby players in action.\u00a0 <span style=\"color: black;\">Disability sport doesn\u2019t just inspire us all to be the best we can be, it\u2019s also about world class athletes and competition at the highest level. That\u2019s why I couldn\u2019t be more delighted with our partnership with Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby. We\u2019re looking forward to working with GBWR, creating more possibilities than ever before for people to engage with, be inspired by, and have a go at the sport.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Later this year international Wheelchair Rugby teams from Australia (London 2012 Gold medallists); Canada (Silver); USA (Bronze); New Zealand; South Africa; Japan and France, will return to the Copper Box Arena to join Great Britain for the highly anticipated BT World Wheelchair Rugby Challenge that will run alongside the Rugby World Cup from 12 to 16 October 2015.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Ticket information is available from the WWRC15 website: <span style=\"color: black;\">www.wwrc15.com<\/span> \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">For further details contact Daniel Hook at GBWR: <a href=\"mailto:danielhook@rfu.com\"><span style=\"color: black;\">danielhook@rfu.com<\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 or Martyn Salt: <a href=\"mailto:martyn.salt@wwrc15.com\"><span style=\"color: black;\">martyn.salt@wwrc15.com<\/span><\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Twitter: @wwrc15<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Facebook: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wwrc15\"><span style=\"color: black;\">www.facebook.com\/wwrc15<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON\u2019S STORM WIN THE INAURGURAL BT WHEELCHAIR RUGBY NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS 2015 London Wheelchair Rugby Club Storm has won the BT Wheelchair Rugby National Championships at the Copper Box Arena in London\u2019s Queen Elizabeth Park.\u00a0 The event was the first in a three year partnership between Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby (GBWR) and BT, a long-term supporter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11060,17365,5533,16533,16532,7626,3959,6994,17413,3923],"class_list":["post-86088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ulster-rugby","tag-11060","tag-bt","tag-championships","tag-inaurgural","tag-londons","tag-national","tag-rugby","tag-storm","tag-wheelchair","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86088"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":683649,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86088\/revisions\/683649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}